This space is for friends, family and sworn enemies to convene, commiserate and bask in the dim glow of our most deficient public figures. Hopefully we can have some laughs along the way. If we don't, it's your fault.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Giving the People What They Want

Like it says at the top of your screen, this blog is about
being a new dad and a newish husband and I like to keep my focus confined to
this subject matter.

It’s a cardinal rule of blogging (and in lots of other
places too) that one should find a niche, dig in and own it.

I’m trying to do just that.

Mine is a narrow little corner of the virtual sandbox but, it's comfortable. My neighbors consist mostly of mommy bloggers, of which there are probably 10 million and daddy bloggers of which there are about 500.

While there may indeed not be a place for "fantasy in football" there
undoubtedly is no place for football on this blog.

So, there aren’t many of us dads doing this. To be frank,
most of the guys tend to lose focus and wind up writing about sports.

There have been a few occasions in which my interest in
sports has crept into this space. But the reception from you all was akin to crickets chirping at a funeral telling.

The one time I branched out just a tincy-wincey little bit
and wrote about fantasy football, this blog got about one-tenth of the regular
unique visitors I usually get. (FYI we average about 250 regular visitors now.)

So, I heard you loud and clear: no sports. (For that matter,
no movie or TV reviews and definitely no politics or religion.)

That’s why you won’t see any posts here about deflated
footballs, crotch-grabbing running backs or the many ways the Toronto Maple
Leafs are taking years off my life.

A few days ago I was sitting in front of my keyboard, ready
to write a blog on the Super Bowl when it occurred to me that, no one, and I
mean no one, cares about that.

Then I thought, “Why not write about how much you hate the
blockbuster movie ‘Frozen’?”

Why not tell the people that, from a critical perspective,
this story is a complete heap of dog poop and, from a Tipper Gore over-reactive-parent-perspective,
it sends about 1,000 terrible messages to kids?

Why not write those things? The better question is: “why
write those things when you’ve got a new story about your son kicking you in
the groin — again?”

This one happened a couple days ago when I was picking the
boy up from day care. His spirits were high — in part because I’d just informed
him that, after about a week of not eating Hy-Vee Chinese food, we were on our way to do just that.

If I use this picture again, I think I have to pay Matt Groening
$10,000 cash.

After putting on his boots, which I would later discover
have steel toes, we bundled up and headed out to the car. As I carried him, he
chattered away, pleasantly pleased with his lot in life.

He waved his arms and dangled his feet. As we got to the car
I opened the door, adjusted his seat and, as I lowered him through the door, he
lowered the boom.

His leg swung back, then swung forward.

I’m not sure how, but I managed to drop him in his seat
before I dropped to a knee in the snow.

In that weird, out-of-body moment that accompanies all
instances of sudden, acute pain, I immediately wondered how bad this looked to
any of the cars passing by.

“Mommy, why is that man kneeling and crying at the side of
the road?”

A combination of pride and not wanting to have pants soaked
with the snow, forced me to move faster than I might otherwise have.

I made my way around the trunk toward the driver’s door,
supporting myself by leaning on the car as I did.

I probably looked intoxicated
as I shuffled toward the driver’s seat and can say the only good
things to come out of this were that just a couple cars drove by me and we got Chinese
food.